One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Elder Races, Book 4
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 336 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle



Grace Andreas never expected the Power of the Oracle to come to her. She never expected her older sister Petra to be killed along with her husband in a horrific car crash, a crash that Grace herself barely survived. She never expected at twenty-three years old to have the responsibility of raising and protecting her young niece and nephew. She never expected the massive debt from the surgeries she needed to reconstruct her knee, or having to drop out of college. But expectations don't pay the bills or feed, clothe, and protect her kids, and they sure don't face three immensely Powerful and achingly ancient beings when they show up on her Louisiana doorstep at an ungodly hour of the night for a counsel with the Oracle.

That's on Grace. It's all on Grace.

So is dealing with the emotional fallout of that session, which included watching someone break the rules of sanctuary and get killed right in front of her, and trusting one of the most Powerful of Demonkind to protect her kids. There are so very many things wrong with both of those things she doesn't even know where to start. All Grace knows is that she no longer feels completely safe in her own home, and an imperious Djinn named Khalil may be her only hope in keeping her kids safe in the long term.

Djinn are known for their honor when they make deals, so if she can just figure out a way to word a possible exchange of favors so it doesn't come back to bite her on the butt, maybe she can relax a little. At least she hopes she can when she finds out what he wants in trade. She honestly doesn't know if she can handle having the irritating, superior, supercilious, fascinating, compelling Bane of Her Existence popping into her house all the time. Then again, the alternative is ever so much worse.

Khalil is quite sure he doesn't care for the impudent human who shows him an appalling lack of respect, but he has to admit, there are aspects of her personality that intrigue him. She's got a fiery disposition and she's completely irresponsible of course, not to mention strong-willed and obstinate. He approves of the concern she has for the little ones, though, and those precious little children must be protected at all costs.

The more time Khalil spends with the children, and through them, Grace, the less annoying he finds her, until he realizes she is stirring emotions in him that are unfamiliar and not entirely pleasant...but impossible to ignore. This young little human with her mix of Power both young and ancient starts to intrigue him as sure as her babies have wormed their way into his heart. It is the grossest of ironies, then, that just as Grace and the children start to matter more to Khalil than he's ever imagined, a new danger rises that threatens their safety. A danger that not even Khalil, will all his infinite resources, may be able to avert in time to save them.


I have loved this series from the moment a changeling named Pia stole a 1962 penny from a creature who is murderously notorious for not liking his horde touched, let alone taken. Dragos and Pia's story blew me away, and while theirs was - and still is - my favorite book of the series so far, I enjoyed the two that came before this one very much. Just for different reasons than I loved Dragos and Pia's.

I'm thrilled to say the magic that was in that first book is back in this one. And it is magic. Fantastic, fun, poignant, wonderful magic. It's the confluence of ancient and young, dour and irreverent, dominant male and feisty female. It's a creature so Powerful it could explode you into a dozen pieces with little more than a thought...pitting wits and slinging sarcasm with a human who has been alive for a mere speck of time comparatively. It is...achieving pancakes and yanking chains just as sure as it is soft pledges of friendship and dictates that those pledges can't be taken back. A unique, precious mix of extreme competence, adorable obliviousness, and earnest confusion. Searing passion and gentle tenderness. It is all of that and more, and it is in every moment of interaction between the mighty Djinn and the wee but fierce Oracle. Just as it was between the dragon and the changeling.

Nobody does that sort of magic like Harrison. Nobody.

The chemistry between Grace and Khalil was perfect. Their characters were perfect. I loved them both. Grace had an incandescent spirit and an admittedly unwise (but so funny!) habit of poking the big, scary Djinn with a pointy stick, but she was also fiercely protective and utterly responsible for and with her niece and nephew's health and well being. I sorta loved seeing her struggle to pay bills and shop with two very young children. It was so fantastically pedestrian, so human and common-life, that it stood out against the paranormal shenanigans like a beacon and served to make her unquestionably believable.

Khalil was perhaps slightly more impressive to me than even Dragos. He was just as arrogant and dictatorial as the dragon, just as pure alpha male, but Khalil displayed a slightly wider range of emotion than Dragos did. He also came across as a little less intense and a little less feral than Dragos. A little more touchable, in a way. Still unquestionably ancient and powerful, but a bit more flexible, too. I found myself favoring that as the book went along.

For all that was awesome about this book, though, I had a bit of trouble getting into it. The first few chapters seemed slow to me (not surprisingly that changed as soon as Khalil stepped in and stayed awhile), and I felt a bit bogged down by too much information overload in other places throughout the narrative. There were also a couple of plot threads I would have liked seeing get more page time and have more influence in the book (Phaedra's in particular).

Most of the story was devoted to character development and the evolution of the relationship between Grace and Khalil. I loved and adored that for what it was, don't get me wrong, but I enjoyed the plot-driven points of external conflict that were more heavily featured in the last twenty to thirty percent of the book and would have been thrilled had a bit more of that been more evenly threaded throughout the book. Doing so may also have smoothed out the ending a bit more, an ending that felt a little overburdened by the many plot thread resolutions that got crammed into a short number of pages.

Still, those are minor issues - nearly insubstantial, really. I can't say enough how much I loved this book. Grace and Khalil are my favorite romance characters of the series since Dragos and Pia, and the scenes with Khalil and the kids were so sweetly tender and wonderfully endearing that I was a big puddle of goo in several places. It's so much fun! Definitely right up there with the first. Not quite as high, but close. Very, very close.

And yeah, I'm practically salivating for the next book after I was stupid enough to read the sneak peak at the end of this one. I knew I shouldn't, but I did it anyway. I couldn't help myself! Now I'm paying the price. Patience may be a virtue, but it's not one of mine. Argh!

Quotables:

Screw pretty. I'd rather be strong. Pretty fades over time. Strength gets you through the bad shit. And that matters, because sometimes there's a lot of bad shit.

It was late, she had poor impulse control, and he was interesting. That sentence probably encapsulated every mistake every female had made throughout the history of relationships.

"You are beautiful," he said with evident pleasure. His pure, gorgeous voice sounded the same. "Clearly bathing suits you."

I started counting time for you.
I want to change who I am for you.
You are my Grace.

"Are you having fun?" he asked suspiciously.
"We're on the fucking moon!" she shouted. "There's nothing here!"
He stared at her. "I don't think you're having fun."
"No air!"

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Elder Races, Book 3
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Length: 312 Pages
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


His friend and fellow Wyr sentinel Tiago was dying when Dragos' First, Rune Ainissesthai, turned to the vague and nearly catatonic Vampyre sorceress Carling Severen and shook her back into awareness, demanding she use her not inconsiderable power to save him. The cost for that save was one favor. Though Dragos wasn't happy, Rune had no intention of welshing. He just hoped the stunning but borderline crazy Vampyre would command him to do something quick and easy so he could get back to his duties in New York as fast as possible.

Carling is dying. She knows it. Compared to other Elder races, the Nightkind don't do so well with immortality. Those who had once been human don't have the inherent ability to be able to survive thousands and thousands of years without it taking a vicious toll on their psyche. Carling is one of the oldest of her kind and she has long since lost touch with emotion or interest in life's pleasures. The immense power she's cultivated for eons is vacillating wildly and her fugue states are becoming more and more frequent. She knows it's just a matter of time before...well...time catches up with her and wipes her from existence. She's rather ambivalent about it all, actually.

Carling is rather ambivalent about everything, lately, though. Which is part of the problem.

When the powerful Wyr Rune shows up for the favor he owes her, their meeting is short and not at all sweet, and it pushes Carling into a surprising fit of temper. One so startlingly hot that she releases Rune from his obligation just to get him away from her. And if the infuriating griffon would just go, she could slide back into her decline and continue her numbing disassociation with the world around her.

Rune isn't going anywhere. Not when he finds out just how sweet Carling's lips taste. Not when he's told what she's doing almost completely alone on a barely-there island of Other off the coast of San Francisco. Not when she tells him she's dying. Hell no. Not when he hasn't been able to get the image of her naked, scarred, strong body out of his head since the last time he saw her. Carling Severen, Vampyre Queen, sorcerer, Council member, is definitely not going to die.

He has no idea why it's so important to him that she live, but he will damn well make sure she does. Even if it means giving up everything he's known for hundreds of years to do so.


I can only imagine how hard it must be to follow a novel debut as wildly popular as Dragon Bound was for Harrison. It sure does set the bar pretty high. So high, in fact, that it's almost impossible not to compare every subsequent book to that debut, and have them thought of as disappointments in comparison. It's human nature, sure, and there are few things in life that are fair, but it's unfortunate.

Dragon Bound was one of my favorite reads of 2011. The second in the series, Storm's Heart, didn't thrill me. I enjoyed parts of it very much, and liked it overall, but it didn't rock my world like its predecessor did. I had some weird issues with a seeming lack of character continuity, as well as a personal preference conflict with the Fae politics that lessened my enjoyment of the read. Still, if it hadn't been for Dragon Bound, would I have been more impressed with the wildly original world, thorough and well developed plotline, and fun, sexy characters? Maybe.

Looking at Serpent's Kiss with that in mind, I have to say, I thought this book was wonderfully original in mythos and world building, and after a bit of a slow start, I was caught up in the storyline and stayed captivated through to the end. Did I like it as much as Dragon Bound? No. But as a paranormal romance in its own right, it's one of the most original, exciting, passionate, sexy PNRs I've read lately.

Carling and Rune both seemed far more consistent with how their characters were previously written, so I didn't feel that same sort of disconnect I did in the previous book. In fact, Dragos and Pia were also pleasantly familiar during their brief cameo appearance. I didn't quite feel the chemistry between Carling and Rune at first, though. Maybe part of that was because the disconnected Carling wasn't feeling much chemistry with life at the time so there wasn't a rush of feeling between the characters to pick up on. Fortunately, as Carling became more and more rooted in the present, that did rectify itself, but I think it's part of the reason I felt the beginning few chapters dragged for me.

I never thought they achieved the same level of chemistry and passionate fun that Dragos and Pia share, but that's okay.

I have to say, beyond the romance aspects, and the wicked fun monkey sex, I also really enjoyed the plot of this book. I liked the mystery of Rune's Wyr animal, and how it played a part in the goings on...even if I can't honestly say I totally understood everything that went on there. Tracking down answers to save Carling made this book read almost like a murder mystery where the victim isn't dead yet, which appealed to the mystery lover in me, and the action generated by the factions trying to stop them appealed to my appreciation for action-adventure books.

I loved the glimpses of Carling's past, and Rune's interactions there were fascinating and original. The Nightkind king didn't get enough of a comeuppance for my tastes, though, after all the crap he pulled, and Rhoswen got off far too lightly, in my opinion. I would have cheered for an extended put down in either of those directions, but I'll take what I got.

I do wish things had resolved a bit differently between Dragos and Rune in the end, but overall, I was extremely happy with this book. I was even more thrilled with the glimpse into the next one, which I've already pre-ordered for its March release. I've heard whispers that it may actually be better than Dragon Bound, which...admittedly...is a little hard for me to believe, but I'm certainly looking forward to determining that for myself.

This series has raised one question that I'm still curious about though... Just how long is the honeymoon period when the couple has a life span that extends thousands and thousands of years?


  

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Elder Races, Book 2
Rating: 4 Stars
Length: 336 Pages, 5351 Locations
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


Dark Fae King Urien is dead. In fact, after being plucked off a horse and eviscerated by an enraged dragon lord (Dragon Bound), he's really most sincerely dead. While no one could be happier for that fact than Niniane "Tricks" Lorelle, given that dear old Uncle Urien had slaughtered her entire family to steal the crown, there was a definite downside. Her time under the Wyr dragon lord's protection was over and she would have to come out of hiding to take her place as rightful heir to the throne. And that was a major bummer. Not only did she despise the idea of court politics, but the Dark Fae were notoriously anachronistic, and Niniane is a modern faerie with a shoe fetish and a deep love for all things fashion. Not exactly a match made in heaven.

Still, Niniane gave up her position and her home in NYC to go to Chicago and fulfill the obligation that she'd always known would be hers, and in so doing, finally achieve justice for her murdered family. She may not be thrilled, but she's got the noblest of intentions. Of course, that obligation would be considerably easier to meet if people would stop trying to kill her.

Tiago Black Eagle was still pissed that the faerie had been so adamant about rejecting protection from the Wyr sentinels who had spent the past two hundred years watching a young orphan grow into a capable woman, so when he got word that Niniane had disappeared after a confrontation with three Dark Fae males, and those three males were dead, alarm and concern goaded him into action. He didn't know Tricks as well as the others, as he was usually off fighting wars or managing Dragos' army unless the dragon lord specifically requested his presence, but the thought of something happening to her sent a strangely intense bolt of fury through him. And he was the best Wyr tracker in the world. How hard could it be to find one wee little faerie?

Not very hard at all, as it turns out, but Tiago's problems are far from over. Not only is Niniane determined to stomp on his last nerve with her obstinate refusal to let him guard her like he needs to, but a second assassination attempt puts her in danger on his watch. And this attempt threatens to do more than kill the feisty faerie. It could undermine any hope of peace between the Dark Fae and the Wyr...and end any hope of a relationship with the one woman that Tiago suspects may be his whole world.

Without a doubt, Dragon Bound is towards the top of my list of favorite reads this year. It's definitely in the top five. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this second book in the Elder Races series. I love the world that Harrison has created here, the identity and history of the races, and the concepts for their demesnes and cultures. Harrison also has a writing style that is truly fun to read, and she offers up a slick, modern narrative full of quirky, independent characters who are well developed and three dimensional...and a riot to read about.

And, okay, I admit it, I'm a sucker for überalpha males. You just don't get much more über than the alpha males in Harrison's books.

Still, while those elements were present in this book, and I did like Storm's Heart, there were some things that weren't pulled off as well as I'd hoped, and a few others that didn't work for me at all.

For all that I am a rabid fan of alpha male characters, I'm equally discriminating against weak females. Nothing makes me happier than a female character who will not only go toe to toe with the snarly male she loves, but who can also hold her own against their mutual enemies. Niniane had the first part down, but she was such a damsel in distress when it came to outside threat that I had a hard time connecting to her through the latter half of the book. She was always in danger, which was fine, danger equals lots of yummy potential for conflict, but Niniane was so damn...uncertain and worried about everything Dark Fae-related that she came off seeming very weak in comparison to even the surrounding human characters. And this is supposedly the same girl who was the PR person for a nasty-ass dragon lord. She should have kept the name Tricks, because at times Niniane didn't seem strong enough to oversee a tea party, let alone rule an entire race of people.

And her character wasn't the only issue that didn't quite thrill me. Where Harrison was deft at maintaining the sheer otherness of Dragos in the first book, both subtly and directly, and stayed true to his ancient, animal nature, I don't think that same level of attention was given to Tiago's character. That was a shame, because it was one of my favorite things about Dragon Bound and its absence here was a disappointment. I liked Tiago - don't get me wrong. I thought he was yummy and his protective possessiveness, along with the way he related to Niniane one-on-one, was great, but he wasn't quite as unique as Dragos had been.

I wasn't enamored with the plotline of the latter half of the book. I thought it dragged a bit in a couple of places and the major conflict at the end came about in a very contrived fashion, including character actions that didn't make a lot of logical sense given previous development. I also couldn't quite connect with some of the other aspects. The Fae politics weren't presented in a way that held my interest, and the mystery behind the assassination attempts was never particularly mysterious, especially after the antagonist was introduced as a character.

I wish there had been more explanation and development of the Dark Fae people and culture. I never got a clear idea - other than their ability as metallurgists - just what the Dark Fae people are all about, and I would have enjoyed having a wider cultural understanding. I would have been happier with the mystery taking more of a background roll as Niniane got reintroduced to her people, allowing the reader to learn more as well.

After all that, it probably sounds like I didn't like the book, and that's truly not the case. I did like it. In fact, had I not loved the first one as much as I did, I probably would have liked this one even more, but it's hard to follow up such a strong debut. Truth is, even with my minor complaints and personal reading preferences, Storm's Heart is still one of the more entertaining paranormal romances I've read this year. It may not be in my top five, but the strength of the world, the individuality and uniqueness in the characters, and my adoration of Harrison's writing style definitely secures this series a place as a favorite of mine. The fact that Serpent's Kiss is set to release in just two months is a good thing, too. I've pre-ordered it and look forward to revisiting the world of the Elder Races.



  
And Coming 10/4/2011:

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Series: Elder Races, Book 1
Rating: 5 Stars
Length: 336 Pages, 5803 Locations
Formats: Paperback, Kindle


Pia Giovanni has spent her life hiding her true half-human, half-wyr nature from the world, running when necessary, leaving everyone and everything behind at a moment's notice when needed. Since her mother's death, though, the isolation and loneliness weighed on her to such an extent that one moment of indiscretion with a man she thought she loved proved to be her undoing. He may be her ex-boyfriend now, but he's still blackmailing her into committing the sort of crime that will guarantee her remaining life expectancy is considerably shorter than that of an average fruit fly.

Breaking into the heavily warded and protected hoard of the oldest and most powerful Wyr Elders and stealing from the dragon is definitely not the sort of thing to do when trying to reach old age...or breathe your next breath.

To say Dragos Cuelebre was furious when he realized that someone had dared steal from him - something that no one had managed to do in all his many, many years of existence...and he remembers the birth of the solar system, so we're talking some serious time here - would be a gross understatement. The powerful head of the Wyr demesne and owner of Cuelebre Enterprises, a major corporate conglomerate of unimaginable wealth and influence, made it his mission to have the thief caught. Her scent on a note left behind during the theft is what made him determined to be the one who caught her himself.

Pia had run, though she knew it was futile. Dragos caught her, and had known that was inevitable. What neither expected was the talon-sharp sting of attraction, the mutual fascination, and the danger that they would both face when they realize that there is a much more insidious and manipulative force behind Pia's crime, a powerful evil intent on killing Dragos and keeping Pia for his own nefarious purposes.

Dragon Bound is one of those books that I fear I won't be able to do justice in reviewing. There were just so very many things that I loved about it that it becomes difficult to put it all into words. The world that Thea Harrison has created here is unique, detailed, and wonderfully descriptive. Cuelebre Tower reminded me a little of Archangel's Tower in Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter series, and there were definite similarities between Dragos and Raphael, but only in the abstract, as two very powerful and very inhuman creatures of unimaginable age and experience. The similarities served to enhance my appreciation of this book, not detract from it.

I thoroughly enjoyed Harrison's writing style. The narrative was smooth, there was a perfect blend of exposition and description, dialogue and action, and several scenes truly impressed me for their complete originality and uniqueness. I appreciated that Harrison didn't overwhelm the reader with a ton of world building, and instead kept the focus on the demesne and characters and creatures relevant to the plot of the book. That leaves tons of room for further development and widening world view in future books as the series progresses and kept the plot from bogging down in overly extensive detail in this book.

The plot itself was nicely layered but again, didn't overreach or overextend. Instead it was a sophisticated story woven with several strong, clear plot threads and cast with memorable, remarkable characters. The action scenes were plenty and brutal at times, but they were balanced with an admirable wealth of humor and a very complex and satisfying emotional journey for Pia and Dragos. In fact, while the motivation and parties involved in the theft that Pia was used to perpetrate was one of the major plots in the book, the relationship between Pia and Dragos was the story's focus, and I couldn't possibly be happier about that because I loved them both.

They were exceptionally well drawn, three dimensional characters with their own brilliant individuality, their own strengths, weaknesses, and flaws. Pia was independent, strong willed, and had some major trust issues, but she was also uncertain of herself in some situations and easily overwhelmed by Dragos' largesse, making her pleasantly easy to relate to. She was smart, could handle herself, but had an aching need to belong somewhere that softened her character and made her sympathetic. She also knew when not to go tumbling into trouble of her own making, but wasn't afraid to go toe-to-toe with one of the highest of top predators to ever exist. I loved everything about her.

Dragos was perfect in every way. His utter lack of conscience and his clinical confidence in himself and his powers was frightening...and his genuine bemusement and befuddled curiosity about Pia was often hilarious. He was arrogant, demanding, impolite, and more likely to rip your head off than chat with you, and he was delightfully charming when faced with something out of his extensive purview...like Twizzlers and Slurpees. Possessive, protective, autocratic, and dangerous as ten hells, yet tender and considerate in small ways. He was the perfect...the absolute perfect romantic hero and like Pia, I loved everything about him.

There just wasn't anything I didn't like in this book. Nothing I could come close to critiquing. For me, this book shamelessly seduced far too many of my personal reading preferences to even notice anything that didn't quite work for me. If there were any, I glossed over them in my euphoric state of reading Nirvana. Heck, I even tried to read it as slow as possible because I didn't want it to end.

The good news is that the second book in the series, Storm's Heart, is due out August 2nd, with the third, Serpent's Kiss, coming quickly after that on October 4th. I do so love when a new series I instantly fall in love with pumps out the first few books rapid-fire. It makes it so easy to become deliciously addicted. In all seriousness, though, Dragon Bound has instantly catapulted its way onto my list of Top Five Reads of 2011. If the subsequent books are even close to being as good as this one, I may have to expand that list to ten.